William Thalhimer (1809-1883)

Wolff Thalheimer, later known as William Thalhimer, opened a one-room dry goods store in Richmond, Virginia, in 1842. By the time of his death at age seventy-three, Thalhimer had survived bankruptcy to establish a family-owned business that would remain in operation for the next 150 years, managed almost exclusively by family.

Wolff Thalheimer, later known as William Thalhimer
(born July 26,1809, in Thairenbach, Grand Duchy of Baden; died March 24, 1883,
in Richmond, Virginia), opened a one-room dry goods store in Richmond, Virginia,
in 1842. By the time of his death at age seventy-three, Thalhimer had survived
bankruptcy to establish a family-owned business that would remain in operation
for the next 150 years, managed almost exclusively by family. When Thalhimers rang
up its last sale in 1992, it was no longer a single store but instead a chain
of some twenty-six stores throughout the American Southeast. The Thalhimer family
name would leave its mark on the retail landscape of Richmond as well as on the
city’s religious and civic life. Two of Thalhimer’s descendants in particular
are widely regarded for both their retail leadership and for the critical roles
they played in human rights efforts. Grandson William B. Thalhimer Sr.
(1888-1969) helmed Thalhimers at the same time that he was also busy working
behind the scenes to rescue a group of young German Jews from the Holocaust. Great-grandson
William B. Thalhimer Jr. (1914-2005) was recognized locally by black leaders
and nationally by President John F. Kennedy for helping advance the cause of
civil rights at a time when to do so was quite unpopular in the South. In all, William
Thalhimer and his descendants left a lasting economic, cultural, and
humanitarian legacy in Richmond and throughout the American Southeast.

While
the story of the early department store merchants has been preserved through a
number of general books on retail history, a few authors have taken the steps
to preserve and research their family's personal and retail history in greater
detail. Such books are an invaluable contribution to retail history since they
present information, as well as a viewpoint, not available to the public.
Stanley Marcus wrote about his family’s Neiman Marcus stores in the 1974 book Minding
the Store. Hans J. Sternberg wrote about his family’s Goudchaux’s and
Maison Blanche stores in the 2009 book We Were Merchants. Those
interested in the history of Thalhimers can thank Elizabeth Thalhimer Smartt,
the great-great-great-granddaughter of the founder, who penned the definitive
volume on this store’s history, Finding Thalhimers, in 2010. Smartt
wrote her master’s thesis on the store’s history and turned it into a book, and
her research was a critical reference in compiling this essay.

Wolff Thalheimer was born to Goëtz
Thalheimer, a Jewish peddler of wax and honey, and his wife, Malke, in Thairenbach,
a small village near Heidelberg in the rural Grand Duchy of Baden, on July 26,
1809. The Thalheimers already had five daughters when Wolff was born. A seventh
child, a daughter named Gütel, later joined the family as well.[1]

At the time of his birth, Baden had a
majority Catholic population, but also contained a substantial number of
Protestants and a small Jewish minority (approximately one to two percent of
the population) that tended to be concentrated in rural, agricultural villages
in the southern part of the country.[2]
In 1781, liberal ruler Karl Friedrich had issued an Edict of Toleration that
permitted Jews in Baden to establish schools, attend universities, and engage
in business dealings with non-Jews. The Edict gave Jews in Baden civil rights
equivalent to those possessed by Christians, but not citizenship. Public
pressure on Jews to acquire trade skills and basic German-language education
led to the growth of Jewish primary and secondary schools throughout the
country in the early decades of the nineteenth century. While the Christian
majority sought to normalize the civil status of Jews within the society of
Baden, Jews continued to face legal discrimination and were subject to a
variety of special taxes, property ownership prohibitions, and commercial
restrictions.[3]

At age six, Wolff Thalheimer attended
school at the local synagogue in Thairenbach, and a teacher impressed with his
“sharp mind and perseverance” suggested that his parents send him away for
higher education. He attended a Protestant normal school in Karlsruhe, the capital
of Baden and a major center of Jewish settlement, and after two years graduated
with a teaching certificate. During his free time, Wolff earned extra income
working in a store and acquired skills that he later put to good use in the
United States. After he earned his teaching certificate, Wolff was accepted to
a Protestant teachers’ training college, where he was pleased to hear of their
plans to build a Jewish seminary. However, the teachers’ training college did not
open the Jewish seminary after the Grand Duchy of Baden vetoed the plan for
fear that such a school would draw too many Jews to the area. Since his
teaching certificate qualified him to teach only fellow Jews under the laws of
Baden, twenty-one-year-old Thalheimer went to Feudenheim, a community near
Mannheim, and obtained a job teaching at its sole Jewish school. There, he
experienced little support for his career or for the school.[4]

Thalheimer’s mother, Malke, died in 1839, and
by the summer of 1840 Thalheimer had decided to immigrate to America in search
of new opportunities.[5]
Sailing from Le Havre, France, with his pregnant sister, Gütel, and her
boyfriend, Abram Schmidt,[6]
Thalheimer boarded the ship Lorena in
August 1840 and arrived in New Orleans six weeks later.[7]
There the three adopted anglicized versions of their names: Wolff became William
Thalheimer, Gütel became Henrietta Thalheimer, and Abram became Abraham Smith.[8]
New Orleans was an important transshipment point for German immigrants. Some
stayed in the city but most – like the Thalheimers and Schmidt – transferred to
steamboats and continued up the Mississippi River system to Midwestern towns
such as St. Louis and Cincinnati. The Thalheimers arrived in New Orleans at the
beginning of a major peak in German immigration through (and sometimes to) the
port city. During the 1840s, approximately two thousand to four thousand
Germans per year passed through New Orleans and the yearly rate peaked at
approximately thirty-five thousand in 1853 before declining as new railroad
lines linked East Coast ports with the Midwest, which led many shipping firms
to redirect traffic away from the southern port.[9]

According to company and family lore, it
was something of a fluke that Thalheimer ended up in Richmond. Thalheimer and three
other future merchants left New Orleans intending to travel to Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, but because of their “broken English” they ended up in the
similar-sounding town of Petersburg, Virginia, some twenty-three miles south of
Richmond.[10]

Eventually Thalheimer made his way north to
Richmond, which was an area known for its population of German Jews. Richmond
would prove to be a good fit for Thalheimer. According to an early history of
the city, in 1790 there were 171 white males over the age of twenty-one living
in Richmond. Since twenty-nine of these men were Jewish, “they formed at least
one-sixth of the population. A rather heavy proportion that. Not only was the
Jewish community of Richmond large in numbers, but in energy and intellect it
ranked with the best.”[11]
As with many Jewish entrepreneurs of the era, Thalheimer began his business
career by selling his wares from a horse-drawn cart.[12]
It was by peddling his goods that Thalheimer was able to learn English and save
enough money to start his own “brick and mortar” business.[13]

In 1842, Thalheimer paid ten dollars for a
business license (approximately $285 in 2011$) and opened a small dry goods
store.[14]
While the term “dry goods store” is rarely used today, one department store
historian has noted, “Dry goods stores take their name from shops run by New
England merchants, many of whom were shipowners and direct importers in
colonial times. Their two chief imports were rum and bolts of calico, which
were traditionally carried on opposite sides of the store — a ‘wet goods’ side
containing the rum and a ‘dry goods’ side holding the calico. ‘Wet goods’
disappeared from the language, though the taste for same certainly didn’t
abate, but stores that sell piece goods, and even some small town department
stores, are still occasionally called dry goods stores.”[15]

Thalheimer was certainly not alone in his desire to open a
dry goods store. Numerous immigrants pursued the retail trade after they
arrived in the U.S. In 1842, Bavarian immigrant Adam Gimbel opened a trading
post in Indiana that would eventually become a chain including the famous
Gimbels stores of Milwaukee and New York.[16]
Simon Lazarus, an immigrant from the German lands, founded F. & R. Lazarus
& Company in Columbus, Ohio, in 1851. Lazarus also served as the first
rabbi of Temple Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in Columbus.[17]
As a young boy, Morris Rich of Hungary joined his brother on a ship bound for
New York, and in 1867 he founded Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta, Georgia.[18]
Similarly, the German-Jewish immigrant Isidore Newman went to New Orleans in
1853 and founded the Maison Blanche Department Store there in 1897.[19]

In 1845, Thalheimer invited Abraham Smith, who
had by this time married Henrietta and was now his brother-in-law, to join him
in the dry goods business. The two applied jointly for a license for a store at
11 East Main Street in Richmond, although a year later Abraham left the
partnership to start his own business.[20]

Like Thalheimer and his family, most Jews
in Richmond participated in the retail trade before the Civil War. In 1845, Jews
comprised twenty-five percent of the city’s retail merchants. By 1855, the
Richmond city directory would list more than one hundred Jewish retailers.[21]

According to family legend, a simple
misspelling is the reason “Thalheimer” became “Thalhimer.” One day William, who
still spelled his name “Thalheimer” at the time, hired a man to paint a sign
outside the store. “Unfamiliar with the German name Thalheimer, the painter
misspelled it by eliminating the first, silent ‘e.’ William began to argue with
the painter, a much larger man than he, over the cost of repainting the sign.
Finally, lacking enough money to repaint the sign and fearing a bigger fight,
he decided to change the spelling of his name instead. That was the day he
became William Thalhimer.”[22]

The year 1845 was important in Thalhimer’s
life because in this year the thirty-six-year-old businessman wed twenty-eight-year-old
Mary Millhiser (originally Mühlhäuser, 1817-1876), who was herself a German-Jewish
immigrant from the Kingdom of Bavaria and member of a Richmond family of
merchants.[23]
Following the marriage, Thalhimer was able to return to teaching in addition to
shopkeeping, “as his young bride, displaying both a remarkable talent for
retailing and an astute business acumen, handled the buying and selling in the
store.”[24]
In a move that would characterize the Thalhimers’ retail strategy throughout
their lives, and those of subsequent generations, the couple stocked and sold
goods to “humble farm workers with little spending money.” The newlyweds
“worked tirelessly selling shirts, underwear, stockings, socks, neckwear, scarves,
suspenders, and straw hats, learning English one customer at a time.”[25]

William and Mary Thalhimer soon started a
family and eventually had five sons — Gustavus, Charles, Jacob, Isaac, and
Moses — and two daughters, Amelia and Bettie.

The family lived above the business, and
when son Gustavus was a toddler he visited the eighteen-by-sixty-foot store and
“watched his father cut denim for jumpers and overalls while his mother greeted
customers by name, showing them to the fabrics and notions they sought. The
Thalhimers often worked twelve and thirteen-hour workdays, staying as late into
the evening as customers desired to shop.”[26]
Attention to personal service and customer satisfaction were important features
of the early department stores.

Wanting his children to have the same
educational opportunities that he had been afforded in Baden, Thalhimer
enrolled his children in Temple Beth Ahabah. Founded in 1846, this was the
first Jewish school in Richmond.[27]

Thalhimer and his family were also known
for their participation in the German-Jewish cultural life of Richmond. In
1852, William Thalhimer was one of the managers for the city’s annual Hebrew
Ball.[28]
In 1872, Isaac became the secretary of the Richmond Junior Literary Society.[29]
When the Mercantile Club was founded in 1872, Gustavus Thalhimer served as
secretary and treasurer.[30]
He also served as a Sunday school teacher at Beth Shalome.[31]
In 1879, Charles Thalhimer served on the committee to raise funds for a larger
house of worship for Temple Beth Ahabah.[32]
The funds were successfully raised, and in 1880 William Thalhimer acted as
reader at the dedication of the new synagogue.[33]
In 1905, Charles was a trustee for the congregation.[34]
Florence Thalhimer, Isaac’s daughter, was one of the forty-one founding members
of the Richmond Section, Council of Jewish Women when it formed in 1905 and
served as the organization’s first vice president.[35]

Like many of his peers, William Thalhimer
was a slave owner, yet he was criticized publicly for showing kindness to a house
slave whose infants died during the winter by letting them be buried temporarily
on his property. The Daily Dispatch
of July 19, 1854, under the heading “STRANGE AFFAIR,” noted that Thalhimer had
been summoned before the mayor to be fined for allowing two bodies to be buried
at his home, an action that was in violation of a city ordinance. “The evidence
proved,” according to the newspaper account, “that in February last, a servant
woman belonging to the accused lost two infants, which were buried in her
master’s back-yard. Officer Tyler, on examining the premises Monday afternoon,
found a part of two human skulls, three leg bones, and one or two rib bones,
which had been buried in the yard. Thalheimer did not pretend to deny that the negro
children had been interred in his back-yard, but stated that at the time of
their burial the ground was covered with snow, and that the husband of his
negro womon (sic) deposited them there, to be removed when the weather
moderated; and he thought they had been taken away.” The following day the paper
reported that Thalhimer was fined ten dollars and costs (approximately $276 in 2011$)
for having permitted the burial of the black children. “The yard in which these
bodies were deposited is probably not more than thirty feet square and being in
a thickly settled neighborhood, it is a little astonishing that Mr. T. should
have permitted such an outrage against public propriety to occur upon his
premises,” the paper reported.[36]

Thalhimer’s Jewish faith played an
important role in his life in the United States, much as it had done in the
German lands. Once established in business, he became known not only as a
merchant but also as a Jewish leader in the community, even serving a year in
the pulpit of Sephardic congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome while the
congregation searched for an official leader. Thalhimer was thanked for his
service with the gift of a sterling silver Kiddush cup, which he prized.[37]
The K. K. Beth Shalome congregation would eventually merge with offshoot
Ashkenazic Reform Congregation Beth Ahabah in Richmond.[38]
William and Mary Thalhimer’s family members have a long history of service to Congregation
Beth Ahabah, and presidents of the congregation have included Moses Millhiser,
Mary’s brother (1867-1898); Isaac Thalhimer, their son (1923-1931); Charles
Millhiser II, Mary’s nephew (1950-1953); and William B. Thalhimer Jr., their great-grandson
(1955-1958).[39]

Like many southern merchants, Thalhimer found
it difficult to stay in business during the Civil War. The North’s naval
blockade of southern ports meant shortages of goods in the South, which resulted
in bare shelves for Thalhimer and his fellow merchants. “The northern blockade
provided a major obstacle for merchants, but William somehow found ways around
it. In August 1862, he took out an ad in the Richmond Times boasting, ‘New goods run the blockade!’ allowing his
shoppers to find ‘much-desired goods’ at his store.”[40]
The war also affected the family on a more personal level, as one of William’s
sons fought with the Confederate Army. Gustavus Thalhimer “entered the
Confederate service when sixteen years of age (and) was with McAnerny’s
Battalion,” a local Virginia infantry regiment consisting of clerks from the
Confederate government and youth under eighteen.[41]
He may have participated in a number of military engagements involving the
defense of Richmond from northern raids in 1864 and 1865. Fortunately, Gustavus
survived his tour of duty .

Another member of Thalhimer’s family,
nephew Wilhelm Flegenheimer of Baden, played a noteworthy role in the Civil War
as well. Flegenheimer arrived at Thalhimer’s home in Richmond in 1851, and
“became a graphic artist and calligrapher. His most famous work was the
secession declaration of the state of Virginia.” [42]

Thalhimer’s store in the Shockoe Slip
commercial district was damaged in the Great Conflagration of April 1865, in
which Confederate soldiers evacuating Richmond set fire to tobacco warehouses
along the James River waterfront, with the fire spreading and destroying much
of the commercial district. Because funds were scarce in the South at that time,
Thalhimer got in touch with friends in New York and obtained a loan to help him
rebuild. The loan enabled the business to survive. Less than a month later,
Thalhimer had relocated his store north to 231 Broad Street and he continued to
shift the location eastward along Broad Street over the next two decades. In
1870, a newspaper advertisement noted the store’s address as 315 Broad Street
and a year later another advertisement indicated that he had moved the business
to 601 East Broad Street, the heart of a growing retail district just blocks
from the Virginia State Capitol. By 1875, Thalhimer seems to have relocated the
store to 501 East Broad Street, though it would eventually return to the 601
East Broad Street location in the 1920s. The relocation of the store to Broad
Street on the bluffs above the James River kept Thalhimer’s business out of the
Shockoe Slip flood zone.[43]
However, the firm’s troubles weren’t over, and problems with creditors would
threaten to destroy Thalhimer’s business venture.

The April 11, 1873, edition of the Daily State Journal carried a notice
that William Thalhimer & Sons had been “adjudged bankrupts [sic.] on the
petition of their creditors” by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia. The firm was forbidden to transfer or sell any property
prior to a meeting of creditors in May 1873.[44]
No additional information appeared in the press on the matter until January
1874, when the Daily State Journal reported
that Thalhimer and his son Charles had been named in a bankruptcy listing “in
the matter of Paton & Co., vs. William Thalhimer and Charles Thalhimer
individually and of the firm of William Thalhimer & Sons.”[45]
The store owners “owed Paton one thousand thirty-nine dollars and ninety-six
cents [approximately $21,000 in 2011$] and were unable to repay it.”[46]
The founder’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Thalhimer Smartt, who
wrote her Master’s thesis on the family business, said in a 2010 magazine
interview that this bankruptcy “was not a story that was passed down (in the
family). I didn’t realize there had been any failure.”[47]
The bankruptcy predated the 1873 financial panic that began in September when
banking house Jay Cooke & Company failed, so the panic itself was not the
cause of Thalhimer’s crisis. It’s possible that the slowing retail economy
prior to the panic, or perhaps a bad business decision on the part of William Thalhimer
or his son Charles, may have been to blame for the bankruptcy.

Thalhimer managed to recover from the bankruptcy,
partly because his fellow businessman and brother-in-law, Moses Millhiser,
bought his stock and enabled Thalhimer to restore his business and pay his
creditors.[48] When
his wife, Mary Thalhimer, died in 1876, Thalhimer began preparing to turn over
full control of the store to his sons. All five of the Thalhimer sons had
worked in the store, but it was Isaac and Moses who most displayed an interest
in running the firm in the future.[49]

It wasn’t until 1880 that Thalhimer decided
it was time for the family to live away from the store. He bought a home in
foreclosure at 400 East Clay Street, about four blocks from his Broad Street
shop. The home stood among those of other German-Jewish families in Richmond.[50]

Thalhimer died at his home on March 24,
1883, following a brief illness. He had continued to work at the store he
founded, almost until his last day. The local newspaper reported, “He was at
the store on Thursday acting as cashier, and was able to discharge his duties,
though feeling unwell, but on Friday morning was very sick, and grew rapidly
worse, his disease assuming a malignant character somewhat like inflammation of
the bowels.” The newspaper’s account of his death paid tribute to his education
and his faith. “Mr. Thalhimer’s fine educational training and his eminence for
Talmudic research made him a leader among his people. For a considerable time
he occupied the position of reader and minister at the Portuguese synagogue
(House of Peace), and in an interval, but for a shorter period, filled the same
position at the Eleventh Street synagogue (House of Love). His faith in the
religion of his fathers was as firm and unshaken as the granite hills, and he
died in the peace which a well-ordered life and faithful service of God
assures.”[51]

Thalhimer was
buried at the Hebrew Cemetery in Richmond. William and Mary Thalhimer were
memorialized by their descendants in the form of a stained glass window at
Congregation Beth Ahabah in Richmond. The window depicts King Solomon’s Temple
and its courtyard.[52]

Following Thalhimer’s death, his sons
continued to operate the store as Thalhimer Brothers, but Charles and
eventually Moses sold their interests in the business to Isaac. He became president
of the company at a time when mass-produced goods were entering the market.
Although some customers saw mass-produced goods as inferior, Isaac decided to
take advantage of the new opportunity and began to sell what were called
“ready-to-wear” (as opposed to custom-made) clothes at Thalhimers.[53]
Retail historian Jan Whitaker has described ready-to-wear women’s clothing as
“the engine that would transform the old-fashioned dry goods emporium into the
modern department store and propel it through much of its long life.”[54]

Such goods were proudly offered at
Thalhimers in 1910, with a nearly full-page newspaper ad proclaiming, “We Sell
More Ready-to-Wear Garments Than Any Other Store in Richmond.”[55]
Such sales are believed to have boosted the garment industry as stores guided
manufacturers in delivering the styles of clothing desired by customers.[56]

In 1911, the RichmondTimes-Dispatch reported
that the Thalhimers’ Broad Street establishment would more than double in size.
It was “the largest real estate deal of this year,” the paper trumpeted, and
Isaac and Moses Thalhimer, the “far famed Broad Street merchants,” had
purchased stores on Fifth Street, between Broad and Grace, as well as
twenty-seven feet on Grace Street where a local doctor’s office and home
currently stood. “There is no secret as to what the Thalhimers are going to do
with this property, upon which they have had their eyes for quite a long time.
They are simply going to tear down the buildings now on the ground and erect an
addition to their present store that will give them more than double the floor
space and facilities they now have.” Improvements to the store were already
underway in the building on Broad Street, including devoting the second floor entirely
to ready-to-wear garments.[57]

During World War I, Thalhimers
showed its patriotism by joining with other merchants to sponsor advertising
encouraging thrift on the home front. A January 6, 1918, advertisement in the Richmond Times-Dispatch was addressed,
“To You Women of Richmond” as an effort to get women to purchase U.S.
Thrift Stamps and U.S. War Savings Stamps. “If You Can’t Fight ‘Over There,’
You Can At Least Save Over Here,” the ad proclaimed. “There is no longer excuse
for any man, woman or child to refrain from taking a definite stand in
supporting the Government. Thrift Stamps and War Savings Certificates are
designed to encourage THRIFT, and in so doing to make available the sum of two
billion dollars to aid in the support of our soldiers at the front. Whether you
are a woman in the home, a girl in the office, store, factory or mill, Your
Duty is Plain. Every Dollar Saved Over Here Means a Life Saved Over There.
Everybody Can Save at Least 5¢ a Day! Do Your Duty Now! TO-DAY!!” The ad was
“patriotically contributed” by the Woman’s Committee of the Richmond War
Savings Campaign in cooperation with local businesses including Thalhimer
Brothers, Miller & Rhoads, The Cohen Company, J.B. Mosby & Company,
E.B. Taylor Company, and R.L. Christian & Company.

By the 1920s, Thalhimers was promoting its
“Ready to Wear” fashions by mailing postcards from the store’s Berlin buying
offices back home to customers in Richmond. With postcards addressed to “Dear
Madam” and showing a street view of Berlin, Thalhimers assured customers that
“all this lovely merchandise which we are buying in Europe” would soon be available
to them. Among those signing the cards was “Miss Jenny Mitchell, Buyer, Ready
to Wear.”

Isaac and Moses would also be responsible,
in a sense, for creating some of the store’s greatest competition in the
future. They had purchased a nearby piece of Richmond property with an eye to
expand, but they decided instead to move to another block and sold that
particular property to retailers Linton Miller and Webster Rhoads.[58]
In 1885 the two men opened Miller and Rhoads, which would one day become
Thalhimers’ chief competitor. As Louise Thomas, the first female officer of
Thalhimers, later noted, “The two stores did not cater to the same customers.
Miller & Rhoads aimed for the more affluent customer while Thalhimers
appealed to the masses.”[59]

Indeed, low prices and that “appeal to the
masses” were constant hallmarks of Thalhimers, as seen in its advertising. In
1895, an ad read, “One Thing’s Certain, and that is — when people buy GOOD
HOSIERY at any Hosiery counter they’re pretty apt to continue purchasing at
that particular place so long as that buying satisfaction lasts. We’re not only
patronized by new faces attracted by our low prices for Good Hosiery, but by patrons
who have been our patrons for years and years past. That air of contentment is
plainly seen on the faces of Hosiery buyers here — and where the sign: ‘MONEY
BACK IF YOU WANT IT’ confronts you so conspicuously there’s nothing left but a
ready resolution to purchase. SEE THE POINT?”[60]
A 1904 ad boasted several hundred remnants of “Black and Colored Silks at less
than one-half price.”[61]
And on May 31, 1908, the Times-Dispatch
advertised June White Days at Thalhimers with an ad boasting, “Here’s the ‘real’
event for the thrifty.”[62]

Isaac’s son, William, was the next
Thalhimer to take an interest in leading the store, but first he gained retail
experience with another merchant, Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago. When he
returned, he displayed ambition and a bit of ruthlessness that would come to
characterize his leadership style. William B. Thalhimer Sr. did not like that his Uncle Moses, “a piddler” and a mere “trimmings buyer,” was still working at the
store and issued an ultimatum to his father: either Moses would leave or William
Sr. would leave. When Isaac talked to his brother, Moses willingly left
“without a struggle.”[63]
A Thalhimer Brothers newspaper ad in 1917 told readers that William Sr. was
entering the family business, offering only a hint of what had gone on behind
the scenes to make this possible. “We desire to announce the retirement of Mr.
Moses Thalhimer from the firm of Thalhimer Brothers. On April 2, 1917, his
entire interest and good-will was acquired by the senior member of the firm,
Isaac Thalhimer, and his son, William B. Thalhimer.”[64]

William Sr. promptly decided it was time to
grow the store, whose sales volume had grown in excess of $400,000 (approximately
$5.4 million in 2011$). Isaac and William Sr. incorporated Thalhimer Brothers,
which now had two hundred employees, on February 2, 1922. They privately floated
common and preferred stock, with Isaac receiving the majority of the preferred stock
and an annual dividend, and William receiving all the common stock, which paid no
dividend but gave him complete control in running the new corporation. This arrangement
ensured that he would maintain control of Thalhimers after his father’s passing.
William Sr.’s sisters and their husbands would play no role in operating the
store but would receive nice dividends from the firm’s earnings. His family would
later call this action “the shrewdest business decision William Sr. would make
over the course of his career.”[65]
(Later, believing his sisters were “a drain on store profits,” William Sr.
would cut off their store discount and annual payouts from their father’s
stock. “He was willing to risk his relationships with his sisters to maintain
the integrity of the family business.”[66])

It was also in 1922 that the store moved to
its new space on Broad Street between Sixth and Seventh streets, and sales hit
the one million dollar mark (approximately $13.4 million in 2011$) for the
first time in company history. In another sign of progress, Thalhimers replaced
its horse and wagon delivery system with a fleet of cars with uniformed drivers.[67]
Changes at Thalhimers reflected broader shifts in the American retail
environment. Whereas stores in days past had conducted customer transactions by
placing money in baskets using an overhead pulley system, Thalhimers joined
other department stores in using the newest technology, a pneumatic pipe system
similar to that later used by bank drive-through windows, to conduct
transactions. A vacuum would whisk the customer’s cash or credit information
away to the office where it was handled by another member of the staff. Such
systems were considered “engineering marvels of the age.”[68]

Isaac Thalhimer died November 2, 1930, at
his home, and the store closed the following day in memory of its leader. During
the 1930s, the company purchased more property next to the store and again
expanded their offerings, with William Sr. now able to create specialty
departments on each floor. There was a Homemaker Floor with appliances and
cookware, a Fashion Floor with both ready-to-wear and designer garments, and
Thrift Lane for the budget-minded.[69]

It was a personal trip in 1930, not a business
trip, however, that would set a new trajectory for William Sr.’s life and, in a
very real sense, alter the course of history. He decided to take his family on
a tour of Europe, where they dined, shopped, and visited some of the world’s
best-known department stores. “Meeting with the heads of these stores, William
Sr. not only learned about business trends but became aware of something far
more disturbing. He began to sense a growing instability and fear within the
European Jewish community, noting the presence of brown-shirted Nazi party
members in Germany. Something evil lurked beneath the surface of this pleasant
vacation.”[70]

From 1933 life was growing dangerous for
Germany’s Jews, some of whom hoped that the United States might provide a
refuge for them. William Sr. was involved locally as well as nationally with
organizations that aimed to help these refugees, and he was a board member of
the American Jewish Committee. He attended committee meetings in New York where
he served with men including Fred Lazarus Jr. of F. & R. Lazarus department
store in Columbus, Ohio, and philanthropist William Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck
& Co. It was through his work with such groups that William Sr. became
acquainted with Dr. Curt Bondy, a social psychologist who had been stripped of
his credentials by the Nazis. Bondy was head of the Gross Breesen Agricultural
Training Institute in Germany. This new program was designed to train Jewish
youth in agriculture, the hope being that this knowledge would help them be
viewed as acceptable immigrants and enable them to get out of Germany.[71]

William Sr. offered
to buy a farm in rural Burkeville, Virginia, where some of the refugees could live
to practice their newfound skills and prepare to assimilate into American
culture. Morton Thalhimer, his cousin and friend, was a real estate broker who
worked with him on finding a property for the relocation effort. In April of 1938
William Sr. purchased the 1,518-acre Hyde Farmlands, which at one time had been
a successful tobacco and cotton farm, for $15,000 (approximately $239,000 in 2011$).[72] He was ready for the resettlement project to
begin, and in June the first Gross Breesen student arrived. In trying to help
get these Gross Breesen youth into the United States, Bondy had emphasized that
they were some of the most outstanding youth in the German-Jewish community,
coming as they did from middle- to upper-class families where education and
culture were valued.[73]

Yet getting the students to America was no
easy matter. “In the 1930s, immigrants to the United States had to travel an
arduous journey; it is a wonder that any completed it. (William Sr.’s)
great-grandfather came to this country in the ‘first wave’ of large German
immigration in the early 1840s. Compared to immigration in the 1930s, the 1840s
immigration was uncomplicated and unobstructed.”[74]
And while William Sr. believed in America as a place for refugees, “his
idealism was gradually shredded” as he personally experienced the roadblocks
for these German Jews who wanted to immigrate to the United States.[75]

These bureaucratic roadblocks were quite
well-known, and as late as the summer of 1941 the hold-ups were still the order
of the day. Albert Einstein wrote in a letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt,
“A policy is now being pursued in the State Department which makes it all but
impossible to give refuge in America to many worthy persons who are the victims
of Fascist cruelty in Europe. Of course, this is not openly avowed by those
responsible for it. The method which is being used, however, is to make
immigration impossible by erecting a wall of bureaucratic measures….” Einstein
said he hoped Mrs. Roosevelt would bring this matter to the attention of her
“heavily burdened husband.”[76]

While the first Gross Breesener arrived at
Hyde Farmlands in June 1938, getting other students there must have become ever
more urgent to William Sr. after he heard about Kristallnacht, the series of
attacks by Nazis on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues on November 9 and
10. During Kristallnacht, students and staff at Gross Breesen were arrested by
the Gestapo and taken to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. All the Gross
Breeseners were ultimately freed, thanks in part to the diplomatic efforts of William
Thalhimer Sr.

Ultimately, twenty-one of the twenty-five
students originally chosen for the Hyde Farmlands project made it to Virginia,[77]
about thirty immigrants total including the staff. Although the plan was for
Hyde Farmlands to be self-sustaining, the facility never achieved the goal. By
the winter of 1940-1941, William Sr., who had suffered for years from heart problems,
was again experiencing ill health and had to reconsider the project at Hyde
Farmlands, ultimately deciding it must be closed. Some of the Hyde Farmlands
students became farm workers, and others enlisted in the war effort after the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In a final accounting of the project, it was
revealed that William Sr. personally gave about $30,000 of his own money (approximately
$479,000 in 2011$) to what came to be known as The Virginia Plan.[78]

William Sr.’s great-granddaughter interviewed
some of the Hyde Farmlanders during a reunion at the property in 2004. She said
that every time someone began to tell a story about her great-grandfather, she
expected him to seem “valiant and heroic. But in their stories, he was the same
unyielding businessman who kicked his uncle out of the family business and
snubbed his sisters. He was not a saint, but he did a saintly thing.” One of
the students attending the reunion, George Landecker, told her, “There is no
doubt that your great-grandfather’s action was our escape route out of Germany.
He saved our lives.”[79]

The project at Hyde Farmlands was not the
only way that Thalhimers supported wartime efforts during World War II. Like
many stores, Thalhimers sold bonds for the U.S. government. William B.
Thalhimer Jr. said, “We were also named supplier for the Pinks and provided
thousands of uniforms for all Second Lieutenants in the Quarter Master Corps.
We had weekend events at the 'Parking Lot Canteen' created in (Thalhimers’)
parking lot. There were parties with dancing — it was all chaperoned. It was
very popular with the Fort Lee boys. We encouraged everyone to live within
their allotted coupons and cooperate with U.S. government rules.”[80]

While the project at Hyde Farmlands was
clearly the philanthropy for which William Sr. was best known, in 1942 he also
created an exhibit of Virginia wildlife habitats at Maymont, an estate that was
originally home to the Dooleys, one of Richmond’s most prominent families. In
1959, more permanent wildlife and outdoor habitat exhibits were created at
Maymont through funds of the Thalhimer-Virginia Wildlife Foundation.[81]
Charities nationwide can thank William Sr. since he is said to have helped
convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to make charitable gifts
tax-deductible on income tax forms.[82]

Next to rise in the family business was
William B. Thalhimer Jr. He wanted to follow his father’s example and learn the
retail trade outside the family business. While William Sr. had learned the
retail trade at Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago, William Jr. got a job at Stern’s
in New York before returning to join the firm in 1934 as an Art Needlework
Buyer. At the time, the store saw about five million dollars in sales annually
(approximately $84 million in 2011$).[83]
William Jr. also served in World War II, achieving the rank of captain in the
Marine Corps. By 1950, he was Thalhimers’ president.[84]

It was William Jr.’s idea for the store to grow
by opening other branches, and the store raised cash by offering public stock
for the first time. Thalhimers began its expansion by acquiring the Sosnik department
store in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. When the two stores merged in 1949, the
business became known as Sosnik’s-Thalhimers, then simply Thalhimers when
Morris Sosnik retired in 1953.[85]
In 1955 Thalhimers acquired L. Herman’s in Danville, Virginia, a store that
would continue operations in downtown Danville for the next thirty-five years.[86]

Progress and the expansion of Thalhimers brought
new opportunities to William Jr. In his new role as one of the youngest
corporate presidents in the nation, William Jr. was friends with fellow
businessmen such as Richard S. Reynolds of the Reynolds Metals company, which
made aluminum products. Reynolds offered to cover the store’s exterior in
anodized aluminum, keeping the store warm in winter and cool in summer, and
William Jr. gave the go-ahead.[87]
In 1955 a great unveiling revealed the store had become “the first aluminum-clad department store in America.”[88]

For some Richmond residents, it wasn’t what
happened to the outside of the store but what was happening on the inside of
the store that mattered most. Black students demanding an end to segregation
protested at Thalhimers and other Richmond stores, and William Jr. ultimately
made the decision to integrate Thalhimers despite resistance from other area
department store owners.

Department store restaurants, mainly in the
South, were the target of sit-ins by black students protesting segregation, and
Thalhimers was no exception. Most of the protests occurred in 1960 following a February
1 sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“Similar protests, where black patrons refused to move from their seats until
they were served, took place that year at Thalhimer’s and Miller & Rhoads
in Richmond, at Rich’s and Davison-Paxon in Atlanta, at Burdine’s in Miami, at
Gus Blass and Pfeiffer’s in Little Rock, and at Goldsmith’s in Memphis.”[89]

On February 20, 1960, a group of black
students from the private Virginia Union University entered Thalhimers and
tried to get seats at all four eating establishments, including the Richmond
Room. All four dining rooms closed immediately.[90]
The same thing happened at the Richmond Woolworth’s.[91]
Two days later, on February 22, thirty-four Virginia Union students were
arrested and charged with trespassing for refusing to leave Thalhimers after
being denied service.[92]

At the February 22 sit-in, “seventy-five
people attempted to enter the Richmond Room, a tea room on the fourth floor.
Others went to the lunch counter on the first floor. Refused service and asked
to leave, they remained, some of them holding textbooks and notebooks, a few
holding small American flags. The counter was closed for a while, though the
Richmond Room remained open for white guests, while store officials called for
city magistrates and again requested that the students leave.” Seventeen
students were arrested at the tea room, and seventeen more were arrested at the
lunch counter.[93]
These sit-in protests were followed by picketing and boycotts by black
customers, who had been allowed to shop at the store but not eat there.

William Jr. met with his Miller and Rhoads
counterpart, Web Rhoads Jr., in the back seat of an automobile parked in the
fourth floor parking garage the two stores owned jointly. “We discussed what we
were doing to see if we could coordinate and do it together. After all, most of
our business was done with the white community and we didn’t want to do anything
to run against the grain,” William Jr. said in an interview years later. The
year of the boycott, Thalhimers’ sales dropped 3.9 percent, the only year in
company history that witnessed both decreased sales and earnings.[94]

William Jr. finally decided to integrate
the store. In a 2003 interview he said, “Judgment and instinct told me that
integration was the right thing. People are people under God. We didn’t decide to be Jewish. No one decides to be black or white.”[95]
A year after the sit-ins, Thalhimers was serving customers without regard to
race, and “the Thalhimers Thirty-Four had achieved their objective in
desegregating those facilities.”[96]

Just two years later, in 1963, William Jr.
received a telegram from President John F. Kennedy inviting him to the White
House for a meeting with business leaders to discuss civil rights issues. The
president personally called William Jr. and said he wanted to hear about what
was going on in Richmond. William Jr.’s granddaughter argued that by being the
first major retailer in Richmond to integrate his whole store, he may have
allowed his city to escape some of the violence and rioting that occurred
elsewhere in the nation in the 1960s.[97]

Following the integration of the Richmond
flagship store, Thalhimers continued to grow during the sixties. Some sixteen
new stores were opened, and Thalhimers responded to its customers’ “flight to
suburbia” by locating these stores in new suburban shopping malls.[98]

In 1971, William Jr. received the
Humanitarian Award from the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities, which
noted his service to a wide array of causes and organizations. These included
the Crippled Children’s Hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital, the University of
Richmond, Temple Beth Ahabah, the Richmond Area Community Chest, the Jewish
Community Center, and the Richmond Retail Merchants Association. He also served
as a chairman of Radio Free Europe and the United Negro College Fund, was the
1964 recipient of the Richmond Jewish Community Council’s Distinguished Service
Award, and served as a co-chairman of the Richmond chapter of the National
Conference of Christians and Jews.[99]

By 1976, the store had reached the once-unimaginable
milestone of $100 million in annual sales (approximately $395 million in 2011$),
and just nine years later the store reached $250 million in sales (approximately
$523 million in 2011$).[100]
In 1978, Thalhimers merged with Carter Hawley Hale, a Los Angeles company whose
stores included Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Bergdorf Goodman in New York,
Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia, and The Broadway in Los Angeles. In 1984 William
Jr. stepped down as president of the store, staying on as chairman of the board.
In a move away from the tradition of keeping leadership within the Thalhimer
family, a non-family member was named president for the first time. Carter
Hawley Hale sold the store to May Department Stores in 1990, and William Jr.
announced his retirement at the end of that year. In 1992, the twenty-six
Thalhimers stores located across the South became Hecht’s stores.

How and why did this happen to Thalhimers and countless
other department stores across the nation? Louise Thomas, the first female
officer at Thalhimers, noted in her memoir that while the automobile originally
brought the customers to town, eventually it also took the customers out of
town once suburban life became attractive, along with its new shopping centers
and strip malls. “Department stores were losing downtown traffic to the
shopping centers when the store principals decided that their future role was to
anchor large suburban malls.… Unquestionably, the success of the malls led to
the deterioration of the expansive and the expensive downtown stores that
offered wide assortments and unbelievable service. No one wanted to see them
disappear, but, economically, they were no longer feasible.”[101]

Elizabeth Thalhimer Smartt also said that
changing tastes had affected how the country preferred to shop. “Americans no
longer wanted to get dressed up and spend a whole day shopping, preferring
convenience and low prices over personalized customer service and hand-selected
merchandise. After twenty years in business, discount stores including Target,
Walmart, and Kmart had grown to be major retail players [taking business away
from suburban branches of the major department store chains]. Mergers and
acquisitions continued to gobble up department store chains and homogenize
operations, many stores losing their character and homegrown appeal.”[102]

In a newscast on January 22, 1992, the
Richmond CBS affiliate featured video of the downtown Richmond store’s closing
and interviewed Gordon Robinson, an African-American man who had worked as an interior
decorator at Thalhimers for forty-four years. Robinson said, “Even though I’m
retired now, my heart is still heavy, you know, to see this has happened to
Thalhimers.”[103] The
store was demolished in 2004 to make way for a new performing arts center. The
story of Thalhimers, however, was far from over.

Department store founders all have their
place in retail history, yet not all department store founders could claim that
the business they founded went on to play such an important role in promoting human
rights and saving lives. Wolff Thalheimer’s descendants can indeed make this
claim. The German-Jewish teacher found opportunity lacking in his homeland and immigrated
to America and founded a business that would last for 150 years. Along the way,
the store and family’s name would be associated with saving the lives of young
German Jews, and later with helping pave the way for integration in the South. The
Thalhimer name continues to be associated with causes important in Virginia and
beyond.

In 2000, Elizabeth Thalhimer and her
mother, Sallie Thalhimer, wrote and illustrated a memoir and cookbook, Our Snow Bear Scrapbook: Memories and
Recipes from Thalhimers. In addition to recording for posterity the recipes
for the store’s legendary Six Layer Chocolate Cake and Chicken Salad, the book
had artwork featuring the popular Snow Bear character used in store Christmas
promotions. Profits from the book generated funds for the arts-in-education programs
of Theatre IV, a nonprofit, professional touring children’s theatre.[104]
Nostalgia for the store and its bakery obviously remains strong, since at
Christmas of 2013 Stevens Jewelers in Richmond was selling a series of sterling
silver and fourteen karat gold charms commemorating landmarks of Richmond,
including Thalhimers. One of the charms depicted a Thalhimers shopping bag
accompanied by a checkered box representing the black and white boxes that once
held goods from the Thalhimers bakery.[105]

In 2004, the “Richmond 34” held a ceremony
to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the sit-in at Thalhimers. One of the
original protestors who had been arrested at the store, Elizabeth Johnson Rice,
was on hand and gave the Thalhimer family engraved plaques honoring Thalhimers’
effort to integrate during a time of great social unrest.[106]

In 2006, members of the Thalhimer family
traveled to Thairnbach, Germany, where they presented copies of books about
Richmond and Virginia. They also visited the cemetery in Waibstadt where their
ancestors are buried. Although they did not find the graves they sought at this
time, they commemorated the visit by leaving stones that came from the Hebrew
Cemetery in Richmond. The Thalhimers established a relationship with Dr. Roland
Flade, who later discovered the nearby graves the family had sought, those of
Goëtz and Malke Thalheimer. Flade photographed and made rubbings of the graves
and collected two bags of dirt from the site. He sent the mementos to Richmond
so family members were able to sprinkle the dirt on William Thalhimer’s grave
in Richmond’s Hebrew Cemetery.[107]

In March 2013, the Virginia Department of
Historic Resources listed Hyde Park, the Hyde Farmlands property, on its
Virginia Landmarks Register and also forwarded the listing to the National Park
Service for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. The
nomination referred to Hyde Park as a former tobacco plantation that “was
purchased in 1938 by Richmond department store owner William B. Thalhimer to
create a training farm for Jewish students of the German agricultural Gross
Breesen Institute who sought escape from Nazi Germany.”[108]

In December 2013, the Museum of Jewish
Heritage in New York featured the Hyde Farmlands story in its exhibit “Against
the Odds: American Jews & the Rescue of Europe’s Refugees, 1933-1941.” The
exhibit tells of the American Jews who volunteered to help these refugees, and
among those featured is William Thalhimer Sr., himself the grandson of a German-Jewish
immigrant whose legacy continues to influence the present.[109]

[4] Smartt, Finding Thalhimers, 14-17; Goldstein, 47. One retail historian
claims that Thalhimer was a history professor at the University of Heidelberg
before coming to America, but a family member has said the university has no
records to support this claim.

[42] Andrea Mehrländer, The Germans of Charleston, Richmond and New
Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850-1870 (Berlin, Germany: Walter de
Gruyter, 2011), 26.

[43] The store’s various locations
throughout the 1870s and 1880s are somewhat difficult to pin down. It appears
that Thalhimer moved the store a number of times during these two decades. “A
Guide to the William Blum Thalhimer, Jr. Corporate and Family Archives, 1862-1992,”
Virginia Historical Society, Company History (accessed November 21, 2013); Smartt,Finding Thalhimers, 57 and 78; [Richmond] Commercial Bulletin, May 13,
1865, n.p.; Daily State Journal,
December 15, 1871, n.p;

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